Last year was surprisingly bad for my reading morale. I'd start reading things, then I'd stop, then I'd worry about how to choose my books, what order in which to read them, etc. It just didn't work out well.

This year, I'm doing a lot better about it. I'm focusing primarily on books I already own or that have been in my TBR pile for a very long time. I did just "start over," but I don't anticipate it being as big a thing this year as it was last year.

So, without further ado, here is what I'm currently reading:

The Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

I got Academ's Fury for Christmas, so I decided to start here. I'm not very far into it, but I really enjoy the entity-based magic system. It's a different sort of system, running off the premise that everything has a sort of spirit or entity attached to it, and those entities -- or furies, in the book -- interact with humans in a way that ordinary objects would not. It's a really refreshing take, as other magic systems tend to be almost always will- or knowledge-based. The idea is that even people have some sort of intrinsic ability to bond with one or more of these entities, and that they help shape and anchor the will-based portion of magic.

What's even more interesting, though, is that not everyone has access to these entities. That ability is only intrinsic to a certain population, and other populations -- of which we see only one in this particular book -- have completely different systems and styles of magic. This has led to two cultures that revolve around vastly different things: in Alera, worth and ability stem from the ability to communicate and manipulate the entities called furies, which inhabit inanimate objects, whereas the Marat magic system is completely animal-based. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.